Job and Lily have a love for professional swimming and we are going to use one of Illustrator’s brilliant design tools to show off their skills — the clipping mask.

What is a Clipping Mask?

A clipping mask is a shape (called a clipping path) that masks any object below it, so only what’s inside of the clipping path is visible. A clipping path can only be a vector object, not a photo. However, the object below it can be anything – a raster photo, vector drawing, etc.

A few things to note about clipping masks:

The clipping path must always be on top of the object you’d like to clip.

You can only have one clipping path.

However, one or more objects can be clipped.

Clipped objects must be in the same layer or group.

By now you might be thinking… “What? I’m a visual learner.” Well I am too… so let’s demonstrate.

How to Make a Clipping Mask

In this demo, the clipping path will be the text of their names, Lily and Job. The objects we are going to clip will be images of them swimming. To start, we will do a clipping mask for Job.

A clipping mask can be made in a few different ways:

Drop down Menu: Object > Clipping Mask > Make

Shortcut Key: Command > 7

Layer Panel: Make/Release Clipping Mask icon at the bottom

Right click: highlight all objects and select Make Clipping Mask

In one layer, I have put Job’s name on top of his swimming photo. You can expand the layer view to see the text and object image separately:

Once the images are properly arranged, click on Object > Clipping Mask > Make. You will notice that everything disappears except what is inside of the clipping path (Job’s name).

Cool and easy, huh?

Using Two or More Clipping Paths

Now, let’s do the same thing for Lily. Lily’s name needs to be altered so that her image fits nicely. When dealing with clipping masks, you will often find that either the clipping path or object underneath needs to be altered to fit together.

In this case, I want to edit the letters individually. First, I converted the text to outline so each letter can be edited. To convert text to outlines, click on Type > Create Outlines (shift>command>O) or by right clicking on the text and selecting Create Outlines.

Each letter has now become an object that can be edited but not like regular text. You will notice that anchor points appear on each letter — they can be moved and edited individually:

Luckily, compound path allows several paths to be combined into one path. We can convert it to one path by highlighting Lily and selecting Object > Compound Path > Make (Command>8).

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The author

A Louisiana native, Allison moved to San Francisco and became the first Community Liaison at 99designs. Over the years, she established and lead several designer teams focused on supporting, educating and motivating 99d's global community of designers to reach their fullest potential. She loves advocacy work, design, psychology, and making real connections with humans all over the world.

Thanks a lot for sharing this really useful writing. Especially this writing is really useful for beginners like me. True to say I am a newbie to Illustrator and didn’t know about this clipping mask and compound path method. Today I have learnt a really cool thing only because of you.Photoshop services online

Clipping path is advanced pattern which is available in Adobe Illustrator. It is an inbuilt service which covers transparent areas of images for adjusting shadow just like real world picture. It covers all kind of graphics like 3D, 2D as well as vector services.

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Sounds great !! Thanks for the great article about clipping path and it’s various usage, I appreciate your works and hope more article over this topic, and I’m so excited to share on of my clipping path video here, hope you guys will enjoy it- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzbfEkVUwN8